


The Undone and the Divine

by xenoamorist



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Asexuality, Character Study, Drugs, Gen, Gender, M/M, Religion, Sexuality, Withdrawal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-15
Updated: 2012-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-29 14:12:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xenoamorist/pseuds/xenoamorist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were times when John realized his devotion to Sherlock bordered on blasphemy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Undone and the Divine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jaune_Chat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaune_Chat/gifts).



> **Challenge:** [comment_fic](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/profile)/[jaune_chat](http://jaune-chat.livejournal.com/profile), “Sherlock (BBC), Sherlock / or + John, There were times when John realized his devotion to Sherlock bordered on blasphemy.”
> 
> Title from Florence + The Machine’s “Bedroom Hymns”.
> 
> Mirrored on Livejournal: <http://momentane.livejournal.com/10842.html>

John doesn’t believe in God, not after the war.

There was once a time when he allowed himself to believe. To kneel beside his bed and clasp his hands together, head bowed in silent prayer before he crawled under the covers to sleep. But after watching bullets tear through innocents, after watching whole cities collapse into ruin, after watching _people_ abandoned and left to suffer, to die—the realization sank in, clawed away at him until it found a hold, where it clung tight to the walls of his body and leeched despair into his soul.

No benevolent god would let such suffering continue.

And yet—he believes in Sherlock.

**Piety**

  


Awe fills John’s eyes as he watches Sherlock think, watches him solve cases in minutes with a single sweeping glance over the room; respect graces John’s voice when he whispers a word of praise, and warmth washes over his body when Sherlock acknowledges his adoration with a glance.

**Faith**

  
No mind can outwit Sherlock. No eyes are sharper than his. Sherlock will not be defeated, will always find a solution, and part of John wonders if Sherlock can cheat death.

**Devotion**

  
Sherlock shakes beneath John’s fingers. Sherlock is too proud to admit that he is human, that his body is subject to the same laws as other humans. His skin is clammy, his eyes frantic, and John hushes him.

“John, _please_ —”

“Absolutely not, Sherlock,” he says, even though his heart breaks seeing Sherlock so vulnerable, laying his humanity and his weakness bare and open before John. He has grown fond of Sherlock. Too fond, maybe; too attached. He realizes now the depths of his desire to see Sherlock happy. Or, as happy as Sherlock can be—not that obscene glee upon hearing about another dead body, sprawled out and killed in some grotesque manner, but _happiness_ , real happiness, that soft glow that touches the corners of Sherlock’s eyes, makes his face light up even as his lips remain set in a straight line.

“Dilute it. I don’t care. I just want a little.”

“No.”

He can’t grant this to Sherlock. This isn’t the happiness either of them wants, and the hatred in Sherlock’s glare destroys something inside of him.

  
**Love**  


John isn’t gay, that much he can say for certain. Can’t even comfortably say that he’s bi, either. He’s attracted to women, and women only; he has never been with another man.

But he loves Sherlock.

It’s something that he’s come to accept over his time living with Sherlock in 221b Baker Street. At first it troubled him, but now—there has never been another person to whom he has felt such depths of this emotion, and there has never been another person whose pain echoed in him as much as Sherlock’s does.

But he’ll reject it, vehemently, when people suggest that Sherlock is his boyfriend. Because the word is so petty, so small and too simple to describe what it is between them. No word is adequate, not “lover” nor “partner”, not “friend” nor “comrade”. They just are.

And he’ll reject it, just as quickly, when people suggest that they’re in some sort of homosexual relationship. Because it’s not sexual. It goes beyond mere bodies, beyond yearnings for flesh. Sherlock isn’t interested in sex, and John isn’t interested in sex either. Not with Sherlock, at least.

And because it has nothing to do with gender. It doesn’t matter whether Sherlock is a man, or a woman; whether he has a gender, or whether he rejects gender.

It doesn’t matter. It’s fine. It’s all fine.

Bodies are boring, in the end. John is interested in Sherlock’s _mind_ , that machine that whirs away behind Sherlock’s eyes, makes everything slot together and click into place, makes sense of the world and understands people—their mechanisms, their motivations—in an instant, even when Sherlock himself can’t truly _understand_ people, and probably never really will.

And he’s interested in Sherlock’s person. His body plays into who he is, yes, and his gender shapes a part of that as well, but the root of the matter—the root of the matter is that there is something unique about Sherlock, something that would remain constant underneath all the other shaping, all the other molding. John can see that, and he clings to it.

He loves _Sherlock_ , and would love him no matter who Sherlock is, who Sherlock was, and who Sherlock will be.

And nothing would ever change that.


End file.
